“Holistic management is about identifying your context and what you want from the farm, and then testing your decisions to see if they align with that context you’ve identified.” – Malcom White

At Farmer’s Footprint NZ, part of our mission is to share and amplify the voices and stories of Aotearoa’s farmers who are pioneers in regenerative agriculture. Through their commitment to working with nature, these farmers are revitalising the land, fostering biodiversity, and creating healthier communities.

Today, we share inspiring moments from an interview with Malcom White from Bairnsdale Farm, a seasoned practitioner of regenerative agriculture and holistic management. Malcom and his family realised ten years ago that traditional farming methods were leading to worse outcomes every year. Something had to change. Malcom studied and began to adopt Holistic Management based on the work of Alan Savory and the Savory Institute.

The result is one of Aotearoa’s regenerative success stories, which led to its being the first Regen to Market supply farm.

Malcolm shares his wealth of experience, discussing how he navigated challenges and the rewards of persevering through difficult times. delving into their journey, challenges, and hopes for the future.

Q: Malcom, you’ve mentioned a pivotal moment in your farming journey. Can you tell us about that?

Malcom: In the late 2000s, we had three lower-than-normal rainfall years and basically what we felt was three droughts on the trot. Things were looking pretty bleak, and the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council set up a cool day run by John King, the title of which was ‘Never Run Out of Grass’. So, I went there, and it caught my attention. I went to listen to him, and I told him this was all very well, but at that stage, I blamed the weather for the situation. I said, what can you do about no rainfall?

He told me to go back and look at the roadside, which I was quite insulted by, but when I did go look at the roadside, I saw that it wasn’t Waikato dairy pasture by any means, but there was pasture, and the contrast with the dust and nodding thistles in my paddock was extreme. That was a pivotal moment because it made me realise then that what was going on in the paddock was what I had done. It was our management, it wasn’t a capricious act of the gods or anything.

Q: How did that realisation impact your approach to farming?

Malcom: It was purely mismanagement. So, ownership of responsibility actually gives you agency. It empowers you because if you’ve created the situation, then obviously, you can now correct it.

Q: You’ve talked about the state of your farm before making these changes and potential social pressures to moving away from a ‘conventional’ system. Can you describe that?

Malcom: If you’ve really flattened the battery and the farm’s not looking a picture, you’ve got no social kudos. From that point of view, there was nothing to lose.

Q: You’ve discussed the role the introduction to Holistic Management played in your change. How did you start to bring those principles into the farming operation? And how did Holistic Management really help you?

Malcom: Holistic Management was the process, how we did it, and the whole framework by which we started to operate. Many people think holistic management is about the grazing system, but it’s not. It’s about identifying your context and what you want from the farm and then testing your decisions to see if they align with that context. Part of your context is your four ecosystem processes, I’d suggest.

One way of defining it is that all four ecosystem processes are improving, and ideally, you want them humming. They’re musketeers, aren’t they? They’re kind of one for all and all for one. You can’t have the great water cycle and everything else flat; they either rise together or collapse together.

So, what you’re trying to do is, as you mentioned earlier, you question how do I capture the most solar energy and to ask, ‘how we bring that into the system?’ And then, from there, everything else falls out. Of course, it’s a holistic system.

Q: What keeps you motivated to continue with this approach?

Malcom: What keeps us going? It’s just so much! It’s given us agency back. But we’re free to stuff it up, and we’re free to make it better. We’re no longer sort of victims of weather, or, you know, capricious fates, or anything. It’s down to us; that’s empowering; the changes we’ve seen, the increase of insect life and bird life, are just a source of great joy. We go out to move the cows, and we just got hundreds of swallows and fantails just flitting around.

Everything goes quiet because falcons come flying over, and then everything comes back out again. It’s just beautiful. It’s fun, to be honest, it makes it incredibly interesting. You kind of lose the fear. I’m no longer afraid of grass getting away. I’m no longer afraid of anything really. Bring it on! We’ll cope with it. Touch wood.

Cattle on a regenerative farm

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